Quote:
Originally Posted by octothorp
What I take issue with is that there would seem to be a willingness to tolerate racism that is on the same side. Maybe I'm wrong about that (I certainly won't claim to be closely monitoring social media on this), but from what I've read I've seen a bit of 'Pat King doesn't speak for us,' and not any 'Pat King's views are abhorrent and he and anyone who thinks like him has no place in our movement.'
It comes across as more 'keep your confederate flags out of sight, it makes us look bad,' rather than 'if you think flying a confederate flag in Canada is okay, then you need to leave this protest and never come back.'
Maybe the people there who were strongly anti-racist didn't feel like calling out the racists was a safe thing to do, or maybe they just didn't have the sort of social media voice that got amplified to the point that someone not deeply engaged in social media would pick up on it. That's at least partly on online members of the movement not amplifying those voices above the racist ones. Is there some traditional media problems here where they're eager to amplify the racist voices and not so much any anti-racist voices? Maybe... but again those anti-racist voices need to exist in the first place.
But I think the political landscape in Canada is such that there's a lot of cynicism about right-wing parties and movements, that they're always willing to court the extreme right, giving lip-service to disavowing the extreme beliefs while dog-whistling that those beliefs are okay. Are the right held to a higher standard in that regard than the left? Maybe. Does the right have a track-record that would invite that sort of skepticism? Definitely. But they never seem to go the extra kilometer of actively purging those elements and making them unwelcome in their movements.
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This is the heart of the issue, and a part of the reason that I am very glad not in support of any of the ideas those protests. The involvement of white supremists should be intollerable, and not ignored explained away.